Saturday, July 17, 2010

Summary: Marnie Wittier has life just where she wants it. Quiet. Peaceful. No drama. A long way away from her past. In the privacy of her home, she fills a box with slips of paper, scribbled with her regrets, sins, and sorrows. But that’s nobody else’s business. Her bookstore/coffee shop patrons, her employees, her friends from church—they all think she’s the very model of compassion and kindness.

Then Marnie’s past creeps into her present when her estranged sister dies and makes Marnie guardian of her fifteen-year-old son—a boy Marnie never knew existed. And when Emmit arrives, she discovers he has Down syndrome—and that she’s woefully unprepared to care for him. What’s worse, she has to deal with Taylor Cole, her sister’s attorney, a man Marnie once loved—and abandoned. As Emmit (and Taylor) work their way into her heart, Marnie begins to heal. But when pieces of her dismal past surface again, she must at last face the scripts of paper in her box, all the regrets and sorrows. Can she do it? Or will she run again?

My Review

I absolutely love Marlo Schalesky. Each of her books have had a different spin on life and they grab me from the start. Same went with Shades of Morning.

Her characters have depth and are compelling. Marlo’s writing makes us care about the characters and keep us turning each page to learn what will happen to them.

Marnie keeps everyone at arms length and without the insight from the author, we’d never know how life has really treated her. She sees herself as not deserving of anything good.

Taylor has regrets and lost love. Now he has to give up a child that he loves because he doesn’t belong to him. This brings him back into the life of Marnie.

Ok, I don’t want to give anything away, BUT I always forget that Marlo’s books have a twist to them! As I came to the end of the book, it was becoming clear to me that I wasn’t very observant! If you’ve read any of her books, you know what I’m talking about.

In her last book, I “knew” in the middle of the book what was going on. I was so excited when I got to page 207 in Shades of Morning because “knew” once again what the twist was. Yah, no I didn’t!

If you’re looking for a great summer read, Shades of Morning should be one for the TBR pile!

Author Bio: Marlo Schalesky is the author of several books, including Beyond the Night and Empty Womb, Aching Heart. A graduate of Stanford University, Marlo also has a masters of theology with an emphasis in biblical studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. Married over twenty years, she lives with her husband, Bryan, and their five children in California.

1 comments:

Hi Mimi! I just finished reading this book and it was my first Marlo book. I loved it! Loved the compassion and joy that you see in the Down Syndrome boy and all the turns that the story takes just kept me reading as well! I cannot wait to read another book by Marlo Schalesky now :-) Enjoyed your review!